


Home is Wherever I’m With You

by antimorston



Series: Cowboy’s Sweetheart [2]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arthur Morgan Does Not Have Tuberculosis, Established Relationship, Lovesickness, M/M, Running Away, Running Away Together, True Love, arthur "big spoon" morgan, but like in a good way, but together, charles "little spoon because he knows how much arthur loves holding him" smith, dare i even say, heart eyes, house building theme plays in distance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 21:18:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20442683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antimorston/pseuds/antimorston
Summary: After collecting a bounty, Arthur and Charles make their way up to where they can live peacefully and honestly.





	Home is Wherever I’m With You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tenley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenley/gifts).

> this is a sequel to my fic [bounty](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18966178) but it can be read alone for just some contextless tender cowboy love

The air cooled as they rode north, two thousand dollars settling heavy in Arthur’s satchel. 

“This’ll be enough to start us out honest, don’t you think?” He asked at one point late on their second full night running, nudging Biscuit closer to Taima. 

Charles hummed, swaying a bit sleepily in his saddle. “Yes, though I’m not sure that counts as honest money.” 

Arthur chuckled. “You’re right, but we can become-” he waved his hands in a dramatic gesture “-the phoenix of honesty birthed from the ashes of sin.” 

Charles smiled at him, wide and lovestruck. “You’re such a fool,” he murmured, “I love you so much.” His eyes slid closed slowly, then popped back open. 

“I love you too, Charles,” Arthur answered, reaching for Taima’s reigns with one hand. “Let’s stop for the night, we’ve made some distance in the last two days.” 

Charles murmured an agreement, yawning and rubbing at his face as he allowed Arthur to lead the both of their horses off of the trail. They were at a pass in the lower western Rockies, and at the late hour, there was sure to be no one around for a hundred miles. They hadn’t seen a single soul along the snow-dusted path they were travelling for over six hours, which Arthur took as a good sign. They wouldn’t move too far off of the trail, only to the shaded side of a boulder just at the bottom of a sheer cliff, leaving them protected on two sides. He hitched their horses to a large fir and offered Charles his hand. 

“My love,” he cooed, bending down as though Charles was royalty and Arthur was a peasant who was privy to his every wish. 

Charles took his hand, chuckling quietly as he slipped down from the saddle. Charles set up the tent as Arthur removed the saddles from their weary horses. Once it was set up, Charles slid into the tent at Arthur’s insistence to get rest, then Arthur lit a fire for some warmth, already planning an attempt to slip from Charles’s embrace to hunt just before dawn. 

The thick grizzly fur that had been stowed in a small cart pulled by Biscuit, which had been hidden in the forest just behind the sheriff’s office the day Arthur was “turned in,” lay over them both, wedged into the tent between the boulder and the cliff wall. Arthur breathed in deeply, smelling the fire and the snow in the air, barely there under the overwhelmingly pleasant scent of _ Charles._

Arthur had tried on many occasions to pick apart the mixture of smells that made up everything that he loved, but it never quite added up. There was smoke, not of cigarettes or tobacco, but of wood, deep and earthy; and there was pine, the rich, sharp scent always mixing well with that of the smoke; and just a bit of sweat, of course; then the soap that Charles made with the fat off of game, lye from their campfires, and sprigs of lavender or crushed ginger roots. It all blended nicely, some areas of his shirt smelling more strongly of smoke than others, but the other scents had their strong points, so it all balanced out when Arthur’s face was pressed close, breathing in the smell of his best friend, his partner in crime (but not for much longer!), and his lover. He knew he was missing something, though, but he didn’t let it bother him, for he didn’t have to know every ingredient that combined to make the scent that he could recognize anywhere.

Arthur fell asleep with his face buried in the back of Charles’s shoulder, still thinking about the smell of home.

With five hours of rest under his belt, he opened his eyes to darkness, barely tinged with the first hints of dawn. Charles was pressed against his chest, his breaths slow and steady as he slumbered. Arthur smiled and pressed his lips to the nape of Charles’s neck, then removed himself from the tent with the care of someone who found themselves in the den of a sleeping bear. Not that Charles wasn’t a pleasant waker, he was a pleasant _ everything_-er, it was just that Arthur wanted to surprise him with breakfast. He had had plenty of practice leaving beds without displacing a single particle of air, as John had been quite the light sleeper when he was young and stayed in Arthur’s bed (which was more often than the nightmare-ridden young teen would admit). He checked the snow around the camp for any prints, seeing no horse prints on the trail–good, they hadn’t been spotted all night–but finding a fresh set of deer prints just behind the tree at which Taima and Biscuit were still sleeping. He took the bow from Biscuit’s saddle, balanced next to Taima’s on a low hanging branch of the fir, and set off in the direction the prints led. He came across the deer not long after, a scrawny thing nudging around in the snow to allow it to graze. He killed it cleanly, his months of practice with the bow, Charles pressed against his side, paying off. It didn’t even bleed much as he carried it back to camp over his shoulder, a satisfied grin on his face. 

Charles was up when he returned, stoking the fire with a long stick. “You’re not dead,” he acknowledged when Arthur drew near.

“Nope,” Arthur chirped in response, sliding the deer off of his shoulder and onto the ground. 

Charles looked up at him, mouth twisted into a smile. “Figured you went out looking for game when I saw about a million footprints around here.” He grinned wider when Arthur tipped his head down in mild embarrassment. “That,” he continued, “or you got kidnapped, but they were all the same two feet, so unless you got kidnapped by a bunch of yous, I figured you were fine.”

“Good to know you thought of every possibility,” Arthur said, crouching to begin skinning the deer. His knees groaned, protesting the action vehemently. “God,” he murmured, pulling out his knife, “I’m getting too old for this.” 

Charles chuckled and stretched out a leg to nudge him. “You’re barely past forty,” he said. 

“And _ you’re _barely past thirty-nine,” Arthur argued, “practically an infant compared to me in my old age.” 

Charles laughed fully that time, standing up to stretch and grab a tin of coffee grounds from his bag. He started the coffee while Arthur finished skinning the deer, eventually passing over some venison to be cooked. Charles took it and added thyme to the meat before setting it on the small grate over the fire. 

Once the skin was stowed, the venison cooked, and the coffee ready, they settled together in front of their tent, pressed shoulder to shoulder. They ate in silence for a few minutes, then Arthur was digging a handful of peppermints out of his satchel and passing one over before setting two others to the side for the horses. 

“Thank you,” Charles said, holding it in his free hand as he finished his cup of coffee. “And thank you for hunting this morning.” He popped it in his mouth and turned to Arthur, so close and so warm next to him. 

“Of course,” Arthur answered around the candy in his mouth. Charles smiled and leaned in for a kiss, slow and tender in the soft light of just-past-dawn. 

They packed up to set north again only a few minutes later, neither of them wanting to waste a moment of daylight. 

* * *

Arthur knew that they had quite the journey ahead of them, about two months by Charles’s calculations. They weren’t in a hurry anymore, though, so long as they didn’t get trapped in the mountains during a rough winter again. Not that that would happen, since it was April, which meant they could go at a normal pace and arrive in Canada in early June, or at a leisurely pace and get there anywhere from July to September, though that was pushing the amount of time that they would have to find a place to live for the winter. Canada was much more remote than America was, so there probably wouldn’t be anywhere for them to stay if they were hit with a hard winter–

“What are you thinking about?” Charles’s voice broke through his thoughts, and Arthur shook himself back to reality. 

“Nothing much,” he answered, “just went down a rabbit hole.” 

Charles nodded. “Catch us anything nice down there?” He asked with a smile, shifting to knock at Arthur’s foot with his own. 

“Was just thinkin’,” Arthur said, “we really ain’t in a _ rush._” Charles raised an eyebrow at him, earning a thoughtful glance. “Now that we’re over the state line, we have all of the time in the world to get up north.”

“What are you getting at, Arthur?” Charles seemed curious rather than irritated with Arthur’s drawn out explanation, which he was grateful for. 

“We could take the scenic route, is all,” Arthur said finally. “Maybe before it hits winter, we could find an abandoned cabin and, uh, lock ourselves in for a good while.”

Charles raised his eyebrow again, but for a different reason. “God _ damnit_, Arthur Morgan,” he whispered, “if it wasn’t broad daylight, I would kiss you senseless for even implying what I’m thinking you’re implying.”

“Coward,” Arthur joked, knowing he wouldn’t dare kiss Charles in such open conditions either. 

Charles’s mouth twitched into a smile, just the right shade of taunting, as he played along. “Let’s see what you’re calling me tonight, huh?”

That shut Arthur up for a while. 

They decided the next day that they would continue at a regular pace, giving the horses breaks intermittently throughout the day and then resting all night, day in and day out. And that was what they did. They woke up in the morning, some days they would hunt, they would eat breakfast, leave a bit after first light, travel until the horses needed a break, sit somewhere that they had a bit of shelter, leave again, travel until dusk, eat dinner, retire to the tent, make love on nights they weren’t too tired, then sleep until morning. It wasn’t a bad system, it worked just fine for everyone involved. 

Before they knew it, May was upon them, then almost gone. The air in the northern states wasn’t much cooler, but it was drier, and Arthur appreciated that. He was ready to arrive, to start their new lives together, but the peace he felt after doing absolutely nothing stressful for nearly two months was very, _ very _ nice. 

“Maybe we could take a trip around Canada, once we get there,” Arthur suggested one day near the end of their journey. 

“As much as I love you, I would rather die than sleep on the ground for another two months.”

Arthur laughed, but he and Charles both knew he agreed. The worst part about travel was sleeping. It was better when they were together, though he absolutely could not _ wait _ until they got a real bed. To share. Together. 

* * *

They crossed over the border some time in the first week of June, the prairies of central Canada stretching on as far as they could see. It was wild, vast, and free. As it should be. 

They travelled through tall grasses, skirting around ponds and the edges of forests, for a week or so before they stopped at the side of a small lake, its surface as smooth as glass. There was a forest across the lake from where they stood, rocky outcroppings lining part of the shore, and the slightest glimpse of a nearby town, the majority hidden of it by the trees. 

Arthur smiled as he watched Charles take in the view. “Looks like home,” he murmured. 

At that, Charles all but threw himself off of his saddle, lunging toward Biscuit and pulling Arthur down into a frantic kiss. Arthur stopped him after a few moments, dismounted, then pulled Charles back in. They made out like they were teenagers, sloppy and desperate and like they were going to be walked in on at any second, except they weren’t, because they were _ basically _ in the middle of nowhere and there was not another person in sight. 

They spent the entirety of June cutting down trees every weekday then going into town, a settlement about twice the size of Valentine, for supplies every Saturday, spending the entire day’s light working on their task before retiring to the hard ground together. On Sundays, they would rest, working out the tense muscles of each other’s shoulders and lazily sitting in the shallow water of the lake’s shore. The months of July through October were filled with hard work, and they hired some of the laborers from town for two dollars a day to help out. The barn was constructed and the bare bones of the house laid out by the end of August, and the first weekend of September was spent celebrating the progress with their hired workers. November came upon them fast, but they had flown through the building, and the house was stable and provided enough shelter to get them through the winter. Though the inside was nearly bare, it was their home, and they were looking forward to spending the rest of their lives in it. 

The winter was bitterly cold, but by the time the first frost had hit–November twelfth, by Arthur’s account–they had already gathered an impressive amount of firewood for their mostly built house. Not that they could use it inside, for their fireplace hadn’t been built yet, but they had built a small firepit in the stable to cook at, and to keep the horses warm. 

They started making money that winter, building the smallest butcher’s stand in town and selling wild game–no one wanted to go out in the harsh weather, so the kind American butchers with low prices called to them, their venison and other game meat always high quality. They sold furs, too, and sometimes were paid extra to turn it into a proper blanket before they sold it. It was a good living, with one or both of them standing out in the cold for five days a week, bundled in layers upon layers of clothes. Arthur handled it worse, his hands often going numb and fumbling through transactions with customers, though his lungs had never been in better shape than when they were breathing in the cold, crisp air. 

He rarely had coughing fits anymore, something that Charles took note of but Arthur hadn’t noticed. He mentioned it one night as they lay on their cot, which was actually two cots tied close together and layered with blankets to create the illusion of a mattress. Arthur hummed, rubbing his nose against the nape of Charles’s neck. 

“Haven’t thought about it,” he admitted. “Feels nice, though.” 

“You’re getting better every day.” 

Arthur squeezed Charles’s hand where it lay, held loosely against his own chest and cradled by Arthur’s hand. “I ain’t been sick in over a year, love,” he whispered, sending a shiver down Charles’s spine. 

“I know,” he answered. He brought Arthur’s hand to his lips and kissed the knuckle of his thumb, then let it return to its resting position. Arthur threw a leg over him and pulled him closer with it, hooking his chin over Charles’s shoulder. 

“I’m alright,” he assured, “Tuberculosis can’t claim an old, stubborn outlaw like me.” 

He lifted and turned his head the slightest bit to press a kiss to Charles’s cheek, earning a gentle sigh. “I love you.”

“I love you, too. Now stop worrying, Charles, and let’s sleep.” 

* * *

It was easily the most at peace Arthur had been in his entire life. When spring came around for the second time–the first time had been a false alarm, the warming weather having tricked Arthur and Charles into starting their house work again before getting snowed in once more–they finished the inside of their house: they crafted furniture, bought a real mattress, and built the fireplace, then cleared a small patch of prairie grass and started a garden. They fished in the lake, hunted for their slowly growing business, and explored the surrounding wilderness. It was the life that Arthur had always dreamed of, and they both knew it. 

Arthur mentioned it one night as they sat at their kitchen table, eating a small pike that Charles had caught that morning. 

“You know,” he said, “I’m so glad we made it up here.” 

Charles looked up at him, setting down his fork to take Arthur’s hand across the table. “Me too,” he whispered. 

“Feels nice to make honest money,” he added, “and be away from Dutch’s pressure all of the time.” 

Charles hummed his agreement, pulling Arthur’s hand toward him so he could kiss along his knuckles. 

Arthur continued, his eyes growing distant. “The people in town are awful nice, too. It just feels like a dream.” 

“It’s not,” Charles promised. “Dreams don’t get this nice.” 

Arthur came back to him then, a laugh on the edge of his lips. “You’ve got a point, Mister Smith.” 

“I know I do, Mister Morgan.” He ran his thumb over the back of Arthur’s hand before letting go and standing from his chair. Arthur followed him, meeting him at the side of the table, and reached for his hand again. Charles took it and lifted it, sweeping Arthur into a dancing position. Arthur’s arm settled over his shoulder as their clasped hands led them from side to side. They swayed to a silent tune, but they had had plenty of practice in dancing together, silent and otherwise, so they fell into sync with practiced ease.

Arthur closed his eyes, remembering his favorite places in which they had danced. Knee deep in the Elysian Pool was one of them, moonlight lighting up Charles’s smile as he hummed a gentle tune. Another was on the back balcony of the Shady Belle manor, Charles jokingly spinning Arthur in the soft light of dawn. 

He smiled, thinking of all of the new memories they would make here. 

**Author's Note:**

> my charthur tumblr is [here](https://transcharthur.tumblr.com)... feel free to send me messages abt Them


End file.
